Observation/Reflection #4 - What Was the Question?
This week, try to pay attention to how your teacher asks questions and facilitates discussion in his or her classes. What types of questions does your CT ask? Are most of the questions asking students to relay facts or textbook definitions (recall) or to apply a concept to a new situation or compare it to another concept (application or analysis). Does your teacher ever encourage his or her students to be critical or skeptical? If so, when and how? Does your CT ever ask students to provide evidence to support a claim or explain their thinking? Does your teacher facilitate classroom discussion so that students are expressing scientific ideas to other students? Finally, does your CT vary the type of questions he or she asks depending on the level of the class, or the perceived ability of the student? Remember to reflect on what types of classroom discourse you want to foster in your classroom, how you will go about doing this, and why.
Observations: Mrs. A starts out each class by telling the students to look at the "What Now?" heading on the board in the front of the room. "What Now?" is something that is always on the board and tells students what they should have out on their desks in order to be prepared for that day's class. Once the students were settled, Mrs. A began to go over the previous nights homework. She went over each question one by one and called on various students randomly. The homework questions consisted of very basic questions such as: What type of measurement do we use in the United States? What type do other countries use? Convert 10cm to meters. How many meters are in a kilometer? After she went over the homework, Mrs. A performed a demonstration where she asked the students if one liter of water could fit into various sized boxes. Before she performed the demonstration, she asked the students a number of questions that could help them figure out the answer to her demonstration (how many milliliters are in a liter etc..). After she performed the demonstration, the students had a quiz on measurement that consisted of fill in the blanks, conversions, and filling in a chart that had blanks where the students would have to either write in the term (kilometer, liter, millimeter, centimeter...) or the number (100,1000...). Mrs. A performed the same routine in all of her classes.
Reflections: I think that Mrs. A could ask more inquiry based questions that require the students to take the knowledge and vocabulary they've learned and apply that to various problems or to real-life situations. I think that it is crucial that students know the content before they can apply it successfully and sometimes (as I've seen in Mrs. A's classes) it can be hard to move along when more than half your class doesn't understand a certain topic. If students have more opportunities to practice this kind of application of the knowledge they've learned then I think they will be more successful. For a number of years students have had content driven lessons and application and inquiry have taken a backseat so at times it may be hard to break that continuous cycle of always teaching towards the state tests. I will try to have a balance between knowing the content and being able to apply it as well. To do this, I will have more lab activities where students can tackle the concepts in a hands-on manner and then the most important part, in my opinion, in a lab is the conclusion section. This is where students can take what they've learned and connect it all into one continuous story. This section is what moves the information from short-term into long-term...most of the time.
Class Topic: Measurement
Grade: 7
Observed by: Jillian Boisse
Observation/Reflection #4 - What Was the Question?
This week, try to pay attention to how your teacher asks questions and facilitates discussion in his or her classes. What types of questions does your CT ask? Are most of the questions asking students to relay facts or textbook definitions (recall) or to apply a concept to a new situation or compare it to another concept (application or analysis). Does your teacher ever encourage his or her students to be critical or skeptical? If so, when and how? Does your CT ever ask students to provide evidence to support a claim or explain their thinking? Does your teacher facilitate classroom discussion so that students are expressing scientific ideas to other students? Finally, does your CT vary the type of questions he or she asks depending on the level of the class, or the perceived ability of the student? Remember to reflect on what types of classroom discourse you want to foster in your classroom, how you will go about doing this, and why.Observations: Mrs. A starts out each class by telling the students to look at the "What Now?" heading on the board in the front of the room. "What Now?" is something that is always on the board and tells students what they should have out on their desks in order to be prepared for that day's class. Once the students were settled, Mrs. A began to go over the previous nights homework. She went over each question one by one and called on various students randomly. The homework questions consisted of very basic questions such as: What type of measurement do we use in the United States? What type do other countries use? Convert 10cm to meters. How many meters are in a kilometer? After she went over the homework, Mrs. A performed a demonstration where she asked the students if one liter of water could fit into various sized boxes. Before she performed the demonstration, she asked the students a number of questions that could help them figure out the answer to her demonstration (how many milliliters are in a liter etc..). After she performed the demonstration, the students had a quiz on measurement that consisted of fill in the blanks, conversions, and filling in a chart that had blanks where the students would have to either write in the term (kilometer, liter, millimeter, centimeter...) or the number (100,1000...). Mrs. A performed the same routine in all of her classes.
Reflections: I think that Mrs. A could ask more inquiry based questions that require the students to take the knowledge and vocabulary they've learned and apply that to various problems or to real-life situations. I think that it is crucial that students know the content before they can apply it successfully and sometimes (as I've seen in Mrs. A's classes) it can be hard to move along when more than half your class doesn't understand a certain topic. If students have more opportunities to practice this kind of application of the knowledge they've learned then I think they will be more successful. For a number of years students have had content driven lessons and application and inquiry have taken a backseat so at times it may be hard to break that continuous cycle of always teaching towards the state tests. I will try to have a balance between knowing the content and being able to apply it as well. To do this, I will have more lab activities where students can tackle the concepts in a hands-on manner and then the most important part, in my opinion, in a lab is the conclusion section. This is where students can take what they've learned and connect it all into one continuous story. This section is what moves the information from short-term into long-term...most of the time.
Class Topic: Measurement
Grade: 7
Observed by: Jillian Boisse